[Wikipedia-l] About language names

Mon Jan 31 15:28:56 UTC 2005

Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>  
>
>>You find "Italiano" not "italiano" in the interwiki links. That is different.
>>If you are in a primary school in Italy, your teacher will make you learn the
>>difference :) .
>>    
>>
>
>If at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language
>you click the "Français" interwiki link, you will arrive at a page
>where "Français" is spelled with a capital F because it is a title.  
>The first words of that article is "Le français est une langue
>romane...".  In the fact box to the right, the "Organigramme
>classification" begins with "Indo-européen" and ends with
>"Français", once again with a capital "F", because it is an element
>in a list. Clearly, the name of the language *can* be written with a
>capital F, when it is a title or an element in a list.
>
>If at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_language
>you click the "Italiano" interwiki link, you will arrive at a page 
>where the title is "Lingua italiano", but where the first words of the 
>article is "L'Italiano è una lingua...".  In the fact box to the 
>right, there is a "Famiglie linguistiche" list that begins with 
>"Lingue indoeuropee" and ends with "Italiano".  Clearly, Italiano can 
>be spelled with a capital I if it begins a sentence or if it is a 
>member of a list.
>
>If you try to deny this, I think your primary school teacher will 
>correct you.
>
>  
>
Lars,
It is funny I was taught to be a primary school teacher so what can I say :)

However, your arguments deal with circumstances where a word might be 
written in a capitalised manner. When you look for the word in a 
dictionary it is not capitalised. The point is we use the name of the 
language as it is written and the word on its own is italiano. Typically 
we would not have an Japanese or a Georgian name in there but we do and 
it is written in in their own fashion. So why should we do it in a 
different way because the same script is used for Italian, French, etc ??

Thanks,
    GerardM